dumb shit on twitter

So Salon.com, one of the three heads--along with tumblr and jezebel.com-- of the cerberus guarding the left wing of the outrage porn industrial complex, has published a hit piece on Ed Champion over some nonsense flame war crap between him and some people who dont like him. Im not going to link to it, because linking to outrage pornographers only encourages them, but you can probably find it if you want to read it. I suggest you pass, you wont be missing anything.

I honestly dont know whats going on with Ed or what the whole mess is really all about. I dont really much care about any of that. Near as i can gather, the current mess is a rolling boil that got started when Ed pointed out in a detailed essay this summer (of 2014) that author and editor Emily Gould sucks. That this was news to anybody, or that any one would be shocked to discover someone holds such an opinion of Emily Gould, is moderately surprising. I was previously under the impression that the conclusion that "Gould sucks" was the inevitable result encounter with her media output. See, for example, this video of Gould being insipid across the table from Jimmy Kimmel doing a Larry King impression on CNN 7 years ago: http://youtu.be/2-avakrRUaU I also understand shes engaged to the guy from n+1. And i mean, what more do you need.

ETA 8:12 PM PDT: iI mention this because I see an element of hypocrisy in a group of insiders rallying to the defense of a person who has grown her own career through the exploitation and criticism of celebrities. Why is it okay for Gawker to post whatever it hears about celebrities and post libelous pictures of them but it isnt okay to excoriate the author of a book who works hard building her own celebrity based on such yellow journalism? I would suggest, strongly, that it isn't; the people engaged in it, particularly the ones at significant publications, should be ashamed of themselves

Dear Sufjan,
People been passing around that letter your wrote to Miley Cyrus in an attempt to insert yourself into a conversation that dosen't involve you between a bunch of people who don't care what you think. I imagine you're pretty proud of yourself. After all, it got you a mention in USA today. So I'm sorry to break it to you, then, but actually the whole thing makes you look like a total douchebag. And not for the reasons VICE magazine says you're a douchebag. As if VICE magazine had any room to talk. No, the problem isn't that you got shit wrong and made typos. Everybody gets shit wrong and makes typos. The problem is more esoteric than that.

First, it's kinda weirdly racist. As you know, the whole kerfuffle surrounding Ms. Cyrus lately got started by criticisms that she went on MTV and somehow appropriated black culture in a way that is illegitimate and racist. On MTV. Now, I don't want to delve into the ins and outs of all that here, because frankly I think there's very little in pop culture that doesn't hark back to minstrelsy and mass culture was born from assholes ripping off black artists. At the same time, I think it's pretty dubious to say that anything anybody does on MTV can ever be truly authentic since the first time it played The Replacements "Bastards of Young" video in 1985. So the shock and outrage seems a bit overplayed to me.

So there's a rain a comin'. Like many things on the internet, it is fucking stupid.

So first of all, there's this group the societyforgeekadvancement.com who have apparently decided to coopt the word "geek" to mean something like "user of social media technology."

The people involved apparently weren't aware that the whole "take back the night" campaign about the words "geek" and "geekdom" had been ongoing since the late nineties.

So naturally, the real geeks got annoyed at these johnny come lately's popping up out of nowhere trying to co-opt their identity. Such as it is.

Which prompted a response on twitter and, naturally, tor.com defending "real" geeks who play D&D and watch Star Trek from "fake" geeks who just spend a lot of time Twittering from their iPhones.

The whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, and frankly everyone involved is an asshole.

First off, the attempt to reclaim the word geek is moronic and insensitive. It puts this kind of social pressure to be cool on the same level as campaigns by gays, blacks, and other groups to "take back" the slurs against them and remove their power to do harm.' This is ridiculous in that it places a word like "geek" on the same platform with a word like "nigger" or "faggot" or "dyke" when it belongs nowhere near them.

Let's take a brief history at what the word ACTUALLY means, and then we'll come back to the issue of why everyone involved in this controversy is a fucking asshole.